Premium Member Walter Graff Posted February 17, 2008 Premium Member Share Posted February 17, 2008 http://videomaker.com/community/blogs/vide...-100-successor/ MPEG info http://www.jakeludington.com/ask_jake/2005..._explained.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Brereton Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 Interesting that they've chosen to go with off-the-shelf SD cards, rather than P2. Phil Rhodes will be saying 'I told you so' ;) Also interesting that they're calling it the successor to the DVX100, rather than a companion/successor model to the HVX200. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Walter Graff Posted February 17, 2008 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 17, 2008 If you look at the price point, you'll realize they can't go with P2. To me this camera blurs the line of consumer and prosumer. And overall Panasonic is making a killing with this whole seies of camera. First the DVX, then taking the failed pro P2 format, modifying a DVX and ading pixel shift and making an HVX. Now taking that same core and reissuing it as something else using the format they and Sony own. A lot of profit based on taking one idea and repackaging it a number of ways. Good for them, great way to make money without spendig much on R&D. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Brereton Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 Is P2 that much more expensive than SD? After all, it's just a Compact Flash card with a lot of proprietary nonsense added on Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Walter Graff Posted February 17, 2008 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 17, 2008 Is P2 that much more expensive than SD? After all, it's just a Compact Flash card with a lot of proprietary nonsense added on Key word is "proprietary". If you are the only one that makes it because you've made your own controller that is incompatible with anything else, yes it's expensive. But if others can make it too and there becomes a need, prices drop real fast and availability becomes both greater and easier for non proprietary. SD cards are cheap and everywhere, P2, is not . That's why I say this camera is part consumer part prosumer. Easy enough to put XLRS on for those that don't want to spend a lot but want an entry level HD prosumer camera and perfect for consumers getting into HD for making movies on their computers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Brereton Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 Surely Panasonic are in fact the only people able to offer P2 on a budget. Anyone else would have to license it from them. I've always been in agreement with Phil Rhodes on this one. Why did they take an existing format (Compact Flash) and unnecessarily complicate it? CF cards cost a fraction of what a P2 card costs yet they are essentially the same thing. It's one thing to pay hundreds of dollars for a P2 card when you are putting in in a HPX3000 that cost many thousands of dollars, but quite another to expect some buying a HX200 for $4000 to then go out and spend another $2000 on media. If I owned a high end Panasonic, I'd be pretty upset that I'd just spent thousands on P2 cards, and now Panasonic suddenly embraces off-the-shelf technology. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Walter Graff Posted February 17, 2008 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 17, 2008 If I owned a high end Panasonic, I'd be pretty upset that I'd just spent thousands on P2 cards, and now Panasonic suddenly embraces off-the-shelf technology. But this isn't a high end camera, so why waste your breath? P2 was introduced a few years ago in a professional ENG configuration. The concept was to make a great IT solution for stations and networks. What easier way; shoot with P2 and dump it into your stations system for edit and air. Problem was it don't sell well. So Panasonic got smart and realized they could put it into the HVX sell a ton of it and recoup the investment. A smart move and marketing that convinced the world the HVX was the next sliced bread. It had the great success of the DVX to make sure it had a following. Now Panasonic is introducing a yet cheaper camera that does H.264 to SD cards. A great solution for families shooting events, and as an intro to HD for the consumer/prosumer crowd. It's not brain surgery, make as much and as many variations for as many markets as you can. This is just one more market, low end HD. It's a great fit in a crowded HD marketed world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Brereton Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 The concept was to make a great IT solution for stations and networks. What easier way; shoot with P2 and dump it into your stations system for edit and air. Problem was it don't sell well. If you want to make a great IT solution, why make it proprietary? That was the reason it didn't sell. If Panasonic had simply implemented Compact Flash as a storage system the networks would have adopted it almost without question. Instead, by creating proprietary hurdles they virtually ensured that people would be hesitant. They made it expensive and unknown, when it could have been cheap and easy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas James Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 I think this camera will be unprecedented if it sells for the same price as a DVX100. A lot of shooters have been looking for an affordable high definition camera to capture a sharper picture for fast action sports and have been turned off by this blurry 1080i interlace technology that can't handle fast motion. Yet when they look for progressive high definition even this format is severely blurred because of the 30 frames per second limitation of 1080p. Sharper fast action 720p60 high definition cameras are available but cost $5500 so now this format is a lot more affordable. Panasonic is promising brand new chip technology so we might be able to expect higher resolution chips plus Panasonic is promising higher bit rates than consumer AVCHD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Black Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 It would appear the camera has XLR sockets. I'm intrested to see if it has cinegamma. It must do I expect as otherwise you are getting into downgreade issues with the DVX100. I also want to know about the bitrate issue. I have to confess that even I think this camera looks intrestring. Personally I'm a fan of tape based formats, theres some things where a tapeless system isn't that practical, and I'm a real skeptic of AVCHD but if I like the images from this, and I had a good experience with the HVX200, well, it looks intresting. Panasonic are preety incredible. They have made a real name for themselves and always seem to come up with really sensible, often incredible products. I'll be watching this one with intrest. ...and I guess if compact flash cards become cheap enough, you could use them literally instead of tape! love Freya Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Walter Graff Posted February 17, 2008 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 17, 2008 If you want to make a great IT solution, why make it proprietary? That was the reason it didn't sell. If Panasonic had simply implemented Compact Flash as a storage system the networks would have adopted it almost without question. Instead, by creating proprietary hurdles they virtually ensured that people would be hesitant. They made it expensive and unknown, when it could have been cheap and easy. I think it didn't work because it was simply too new and untested a way of recording and too limited in how much it could record when introduced to stations. So two years later they turned it into the HVX and marketed it differently. Had there been other solid state types out there already it might have taken off more. But there were not. Instead all they had to do was say the HVX was the next generation of DVX and flood the market with a lot of half truths about their camera and the competition and they had thousands of folks lining up. It worked! And now they will have yet another variation that fits yet another niche and hopefuly ocntinue the success that was all started with the sucess of the DVX, hence the notion (by them) that this is now it's replacment. Simply marketing terms to say it's not quite a HVX but damn as good and reliable as a DVX. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Brereton Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 So two years later they turned it into the HVX and marketed it differently. Had there been other solid state types out there already it might have taken off more. I see what you're saying, but I don't believe that many of the early adopters of the HVX had the funds to buy P2 cards. The vast majority were recording to tape. The fact remains that there were other solid state technologies available. P2 was itself only a proprietary version of Compact Flash. There was also SD, Memory Stick and others. The fact that Panasonic are now using SD seems to indicate that they've understood that $1200 memory cards are not a good way to sell cameras Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Walter Graff Posted February 17, 2008 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 17, 2008 The fact that Panasonic are now using SD seems to indicate that they've understood that $1200 memory cards are not a good way to sell cameras But this is not about selling cameras. It's about making money. Do you know how much Panasonic makes for every P2 card sold? By creating near Beatle-like mania for the HVX through marketing, both direct and astro-turfing, it didn't matter how much the first cards cost, they would make a killing. And best of all they had a plan for how the price points would drop over time and when the 'newest' and 'bigger' cards would be released. That offered them a means and a guaranteed schedule to continue to sell, continue to proliferate, and continue to make a great deal of money. I don't look at this new camera as the replacement for P2. It looks more to me like a consumer/prosumer addition rather than a prosumer/professional rendition. And to keep the price point down and explore yet another method of SS acquisition, as others are, this should do well because it's got the DVX/HVX as its sales mentor, and will push folks who were looking at a 'lesser' camera into purchasing it because it's like a Jr. HVX. P2 has saturated the market now so the next step is to use SD cards so you acquire interest from yet another group. They will market the MPEG4 as the 'next generation' and future to make this camera sound like is leaps ahead of MPEG2 competition. They will use the viral marketing they have been for the HVX to further create interest amongst the "Panaheads". Bottom line they finally hit a home run with the DVX, used that heat to push the HVX, and will use the HVX to push this camera as the next big thing in low cost cameras that perform like cameras costing twice the price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Black Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 The really clever thing they have done is they have made P2 a mainstream product, because of the HVX200 they have been able to bring the cost of P2 cards down, and they have made P2 a standard format. This means that even if they only ever put it in their pro products from here out, people will accept it as being something of a standard format. It's clever marketing as without the HVX200, people might just think of it as that weird hard to use proprietry thing and think twice about using it. The HVX200 has made people accept P2 in a way they may never have done otherwise. love Freya Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Brereton Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 I don't disagree with what you've said, though I seriously doubt that P2 is now a 'Mainstream format' as Freya suggests. My point is that now that Panasonic have introduced a camera that utilises SD cards (albeit a prosumer camera) it undermines the rationale for the expensive P2 cards. Why pay $1200 a card when Panasonic itself has tacitly admitted that a $200 SD card does the same job. This holds for every P2 camera in the range. Why pay more? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Walter Graff Posted February 17, 2008 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 17, 2008 Why pay $1200 a card when Panasonic itself has tacitly admitted that a $200 SD card does the same job. This holds for every P2 camera in the range. Why pay more? You are right. But look at it another way. Perhaps Panasonic hit the mark on ROI and looks at the profit from P2 as doing what it finally neded to do so are taking the next step. Don't look at the addition of SD cards as the death or some admission of bad judgment by Panasonic. It's not as I see it. Simply another revenue stream. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Walter Graff Posted February 17, 2008 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 17, 2008 And I tend to see too many folks all grouping everything together as in regardless of the price, proposed use, or design, all cameras are even par and should perform the same. They don't, nor should they. Marketing has blurred the line of what cameras really do, rather telling us what they should do, and folks take that concept and think that a Ford should perform like a Ferrari. That probably makes no sense as a comparison but neither does the way folks try to group cameras, but they basically repeat marketing brochures so often don't see the problem in what they are trying to compare. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Brereton Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 I would imagine that whether you view the adoption of SD cards as merely an addition to the product range or as an admission of an error depends greatly on how much P2 reliant equipment you own. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Brereton Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 And I tend to see too many folks all grouping everything together as in regardless of the price, proposed use, or design, all cameras are even par and should perform the same. They don't, nor should they. Marketing has blurred the line of what cameras really do, rather telling us what they should do, and folks take that concept and think that a Ford should perform like a Ferrari. That probably makes no sense as a comparison but neither does the way folks try to group cameras, but they basically repeat marketing brochures so often don't see the problem in what they are trying to compare. I see what you're saying, but at this point we're not even talking about cameras, but about storage media, and the fact remains that there is no real difference between P2 and any other form of solid state memory, save that you pay through the nose for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Walter Graff Posted February 17, 2008 Author Premium Member Share Posted February 17, 2008 I see what you're saying, but at this point we're not even talking about cameras, but about storage media, and the fact remains that there is no real difference between P2 and any other form of solid state memory, save that you pay through the nose for it. "save that you pay through the nose for it." No except that you pay through the nose. But you are paying for reliability. It needed to be reliable the first time around when they tried it as a broadcast ENG format hence the cost factor in making it. It's not as simple as an SD chip, it actually goes through a pretty stringent manufacturing process. They dumped it on comsumers and made a ton more than they did with the broadcast sales. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Brereton Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 I'll defer to anyone with greater knowledge here, but does a P2 card really cost any more to manufacture than, say, a Sandisk Extreme CF card? If it does, is it enough to justify the huge price differential? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Black Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 I don't disagree with what you've said, though I seriously doubt that P2 is now a 'Mainstream format' as Freya suggests. My point is that now that Panasonic have introduced a camera that utilises SD cards (albeit a prosumer camera) it undermines the rationale for the expensive P2 cards. Why pay $1200 a card when Panasonic itself has tacitly admitted that a $200 SD card does the same job. This holds for every P2 camera in the range. Why pay more? It depends on what you mean by a mainstream format. I mean it's not like MiniDV or Video8 or something like that. I don't mean a consumer format that is everyday, but I just mean a format that is being put to widespread use in certain sectors, and theres a lot of people using the HVX200. I mean it's more like everyone here probably has some idea of what P2 is, or have heard of it, but if it wasn't for the HVX200, how many of us would really be aware of the format? Having estblished itself in the semi pro market, it can now probably look forward to some kind of future in the pro market even if Panasonic never release another P2 camera to the lower segment again. P2 as a format probably now has more market awareness than MII ever did I'm guessing. Having said all that P2 has always been a big put off for me. I really liked the little experience I had with the HVX at video forum and if the new camera is anything like the HVX and records onto cheap flash cards, I might be somewhat intrested. P2 was always a big put off for me. I can borrow a HVX very cheaply and easily I suspect but it just seems like too much hastle dealing with P2. If it had been this new camera I could just use my own card, return the camera and use my own card reader!! I'm a lot more open to this thing and I'm intrested to see what it will be like. love Freya Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Black Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 I forgot to say something. Why pay more? Well because the format comes hand in hand with the codec. P2 has that nice DVC-Pro codec or whatever it is. Compact Flash comes with AVCHD which I feel a lot more scared of and I'm curious to see what these codec enhancements will be. Also AVCHD has been around ages and is still really badly supported software wise, tho personally I'd probably want to get it out of that codec at the first opportunity. Basically you have to pay more to get the other stuff. love Freya Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Phil Rhodes Posted February 17, 2008 Premium Member Share Posted February 17, 2008 Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Cough, wheeze. Aha, ha ha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Brereton Posted February 18, 2008 Share Posted February 18, 2008 Why pay more? Well because the format comes hand in hand with the codec.P2 has that nice DVC-Pro codec or whatever it is. Compact Flash comes with AVCHD which I feel a lot more scared of and I'm curious to see what these codec enhancements will be. Also AVCHD has been around ages and is still really badly supported software wise, tho personally I'd probably want to get it out of that codec at the first opportunity. Basically you have to pay more to get the other stuff. P2 is not intrinsically tied to ANY codec. Codecs are software, nothing more. Panasonic could offer their AVCHD codec with any storage media that is able to handle the throughput of data. To my mind P2 was about trying to corner a market with exclusive, proprietary versions of existing technology. I believe it backfired on them. Plenty of people may have bought an HVX, but how many could afford the P2 cards? This new camera with SD cards should just be paving the way for the eventual adoption throughout their product range. Oh, and Phil, if you're still laughing, please pause for breath every now and then. I wouldn't want you to suffocate.. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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